


This is the Way the Story Ends

by Leonawriter



Category: Journey into Mystery, Thor (Comics)
Genre: Gen, In which life goes on but isn't the same, Kid Loki, Loki is an excellent actor, spoilers for 645
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-02
Updated: 2012-12-02
Packaged: 2017-11-20 03:30:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/580830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leonawriter/pseuds/Leonawriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the way the story ends, not with a bang but a whimper.  The world ends, and no one notices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is the Way the Story Ends

 No one truly noticed the change in Loki after the defeat of Surtur.  He was odd, but then Loki had always been odd, and no one had paid it any heed.  How were they to know that this had not simply been a part of who he had always been?

No one questioned Loki because that was Loki, a mystery, and Loki was fine with that.  In fact, Loki was more than fine with that.

Loki, after all, was a very good actor. He would have seen more reason to worry had they noticed any cause for concern.

Thor would occasionally take him to one side, and ask him, as serious as Thor could be, whether he was well.  Loki did not think that Thor suspected a thing, and smiled, and put all worry out of his older brother’s mind.

But there were cracks.  There were always cracks, no matter how well-crafted the mask.  And that made him worry.

Volstagg’s children, one day, asked for more stories, and he remembered watching on as they were told of how Thor had died.  The one they wanted was not him.

The All-Mother smiled at him, and gave him an errand, just as she had used to, and had mentioned how she knew that she could trust him, that maybe he could do this when none other would think to.  She thought, he knew, of other times, of hell-hound puppies and a resolve that had not been his, that he could not know how to feel again so easily.

Jane Foster invited him in for coffee (it turned out to be ‘cola’ instead) when she found him wandering around Broxton.  She recalled in passing how he’d stolen a car once, and he’d had to smile and nod and pretend he knew what she was saying, because he didn’t, and the one she was talking to wasn’t there.

He made his way up to his room, a tower room full of memories of someone whose memory was gone, and no one knew.  His, now, to do with as he wished, just as so many other things were.

He locked the door and screamed.

It wasn’t loud, not loud enough to wake the townsfolk or alert anyone to his anguish, but it was full of his heartache, the pain of suddenly feeling all that he had done, when in the end it had been all he had wanted and at the same time unavoidable.  

He was a child again, and in a child’s body, and maybe this was why he allowed himself to cry, alone.  The boy had had himself and the dog, and Leah, and now, he had none.

Certainly not Thor, for all that he yet believed in his younger brother.

Not Sif, who had threatened his younger self’s life and not any of the warriors three, whom he did not trust with such a thing.

Not Hela, regardless of who she may or may not have once been.  For now she hated him with all of her heart, and he could not forget what she had done to him, so many times.

And after all, Loki did not trust anyone other than Loki.  And even then…

If this was how he treated the trust he gave himself, then what good even was that?

For now he could weep, but the next day would come, and the day after that, and he would smile for them and give them what they expected, for how else could the story go on?


End file.
